A unique encounter in County Durham – A story shared by our contributor Gavin Purdon (Chester-le-Street):

In this further incomplete research about the air war l was assisted by the recollections of the late Tom Lamb. He was a school boy during WW2 living at Blackhouse near Edmondsley in Chester le Street Rural District, not far from the American searchlight and radar camp. Some of his recollections of the Americans are in the booklet Radar Warriors.

He had many memories of the air war. Those relating to his encounters with American troops were happy ones. Others relating to the fatal crash landings of two RAF fighter aircraft and an RAF Wellington bomber with a Polish crew from the City of Warsaw Squadron were harrowing and quite traumatic.

One day he took me on a long walk around the local countryside to the sites where events he witnessed took place.
We were in the small wood between Waldridge Fell and Edmondsley village where the American searchlight and radar unit huts were built. No trace of them remain, only an overgrown patch of concrete. It was here Tom Lamb remembered meeting the group of African American soldiers. Tom did not mention them in my previous interviews with him for the booklet Radar Warriors but the visit to the site jogged his memory.

He remembered the African American soldiers as boisterous and good humoured. They were newly arrived in the UK from the USA and quite excited about being in England. One of the African American soldiers asked Tom if there was anywhere nearby that a man could get himself a drink. Tom told him there was a pub called the Fleece, just up the road, not five minutes walk.

Another of the African American soldiers asked Tom if the Fleece sold champagne. This soldier’s father was an African American “dough boy” veteran who had fought in the Great War and was over here in 1917-18. He told his son the best drink he had ever had in his life was champagne and when his son got to Europe he would have to try it. Needless to say, being a miner’s pub in a little Durham pit village, they did not stock champagne.

In my interviews with American veterans stationed in Durham in 1944, none mentioned the presence of African American troops. Tom Lamb recalled seeing them more than once at Waldridge and over a period of time. I contacted Phil Abrunzo, an Italian American NCO at Waldridge in 1944, about this. He had no contact with any other American troops in Durham apart from other members of his own battalion. This battalion was a racially segregated unit that African American soldiers were barred from serving in.

Phil Abrunzo thought it most likely these African American soldiers were there as a working party preparing the campsite before his battalion arrived and were then involved in decommissioning the campsite after his battalion left Durham to take part in the Normandy landings of June 1944. Phil Abrunzo’s unit left Waldridge quickly in complete secrecy and without warning. They were there one day and gone the next.
Tom Lamb who encountered the African American soldiers was someone l had known for nearly 50 years. He was a miner at Craghead Colliery and a well known local artist. When his mine closed in the 1960’s he had a new career as a museum assistant and technician at the newly opened Durham Light Infantry Museum and Arts Centre. He was a talented individual and I remember seeing him years ago, out in the countryside, with his rucksack, bicycle and sketch book.’

One of the contributors for this project said that he ‘remembered seeing several Nissen huts in the grounds of the large house that had been billeted for the troops, real-life black GIs were welcomed warmly by the people of Hull and Cottingham. The American soldiers used to try out their dance moves on local girls at the King Street Rooms on the village square (somewhere I knew well – my parents hired it for one of my birthday parties while at primary school in the mid 1960s).

There were black soldiers based at the Lawns site. It appears the American authorities were keen to segregate these forces and even their white officers were billeted off site. The local Hull and Cottingham people accepted them in the area. They were well known as a source of chocolate, sweets etc

African American troops were in the area, roughly 3 or 4 miles away from Cottingham village, in Hull itself. An industrial area of large woolsheds were adjacent to a factory occupied by National Radiators Ltd known as Ideal Standard. My mother worked there from nearby Murrayfield Road, the area having railway goods access, barrage balloons and some large ack ack guns operated by those American troops. They made friends with local females (!), and mother recalled her friends could be challenged late at night “what ya doing there sweetheart” etc. Chocolate and chewing gum were liberally offered.

Most definitely, I can remember them vividly, they often gave us candy or chewing gum. Went to the Regal Cinema in Hull where they gave a big concert, I believe they were very popular with the locals. Remember them leaving ,the tanks and jeeps rolling down South St.

There was strict segregation in the American forces & I am certain the black Americans camp was somewhere round Hartland Way in 1944.

‘There were training camps for African American troops in Cottingham and Driffield, both in Yorkshire, East Riding, and I can remember seeing my first African American there about 1946-ish.’

‘My mother told me about a lady she met at the local shop, who had a son who with very dark skin with black curly hair, in WW2, 1944ish,  and times were hard. so they did anything to make money to survive’

‘My father was in the RAF and when having conversations with some USAF officers, they were very dismissive of black personnel in their forces. British officers were not impressed by their attitude.’

During the Second World War, between 1940-45, part of what had been the Grange Estate, was used as a camp for American Soldiers; the site was then acquired by the University College of Hull, complete with army huts and became known as Camp Hall, opening in 1946, however, it had ceased to be used by 1957, when Ferens Hall was built nearby. These pictures show some of the huts in a derelict state in 1960. (Norman Bisby Collection)

I was very young at the time, but I remember my Aunt saying that before the troops arrived in the area, American officers had come where she worked in the village, asking questions about which pubs were for the ‘negroes’ and which ones were for the ‘whites’. Local folks replied that they had no idea what they were talking about, because everybody went to the same places, and the Americans were really angry, especially when they were told that this was Britain, and they couldn’t care less about the colour of the skin.

Later on, in one of the inspections, Americans complained that Black soldiers would walk freely anywhere they wanted and local people told them, basically, that White Americans were welcome, as the Black ones would not mind to share the pubs.

They went straight to complaint to the government!

My Dad delivered tanks to US bases during WW2. When he went to the segregated Black camps, they would chat, offered food and cigars, but the guys from the White camps were ‘rubbish’ (his words) and condescendent.

Many people are not aware that White British in many areas would provide shelter to black American soldiers that were mistreated by US officers.

I remember hearing Granna telling Mother that she should have been more careful with the French letters. I was very young, 8, I think, and I could not understand why she was writing to France. I even thought that maybe my father was there, because I never met him.I was just told that he died in the war, but it wasn’t a conversation that I could have with my family.

We had neighbours from India and their skin was darker than mine, but the rest of my family was much whiter than I was. I simply never thought about all this, until much later when a group of people was showing around places related to the war, and in one narrow, dark side road, they were talking about the place being known as the ‘french letters’ place’ because Americans would take there their British girlfriends, leaving behind condoms. French letters were the condoms, and my mother hadn’t been careful with them, so she got pregnant from a coloured Yank that left a few days later for D-Day. I had a wonderful family and a good life, and never felt any racism from anyone, just because my skin was darker.

My grandfather worked as a driver during the WW2, and one of his duties was to pick up wounded American troops that had been landed. On his first time he saw their wounded men on stretchers waiting to be transported, there were sergeants distributing cigarettes to each White soldier, ignoring black soldiers as if they weren’t there, and I remember my Grandfather saying how revolting that was. From that point onwards, every time Grandad had to go and drive American wounded soldiers, he would bring his own cigarettes to give them to the black guys. He was a British civilian so when the sergeants complaint, he gave them hell saying that in Britain you don’t care about the colour of the skin and he did not allow any word against them.